Leak filling rear footwell with water

The 94 RMW I picked up over the weekend has a leak somewhere that only gets the back floor wet. Its the rear set footwell, not the 3rd row seat. The front floors are dry too. I assume this leak has been there for a while, it looks like it claimed the PS rear floor pan (rotted through). The driver's rear is soaked but hasn't rusted through yet. I thought it might be the vista glass because the seal is lifted a bit on one side, but after a good washing today I didn't see any drips inside. The headliner doesn't show any stains so I am guessing a body seal somewhere. Anyone know where the seals are on this part of the car?

Pull the rear seat bottom out (quick and easy) and pull the carpet. I had the same problem and it was a rotted rear wheel well.

Filled the floor when it rained, but only when I drove the car.

I think we have a winner. It rained all night, not a drop in the car. I took it to work this morning and found a small trail coming from under the PS C-pillar plastic pooling under the rear seat. Thanks! Now I just have to fix it.

Fix it?
Just drill a few drain holes in the floor pan and the problem will be solved.
I've had cars in the past with holes so big in the floor pans that if you drove in deep snow the interior would start filling up with the white stuff.
Nothing that a few liberated road signs, crushed McDonalds bags , fiberglass window screening and plenty of bondo won't fix.

I have the same issue. I have fixed twice with TigerHair. Going to try a piece of metal and adhesive in the spring.

Tim

if you want to fix the problem,. find the leak,. if you want to cure the symptoms, use the firbleglass resin cardboard trick, if you want to do the deluxe repair,. use the cardboard for a mould coat it with resin,. then tear into random shapes fibreglass matting and pressit into the resin with an old paint brush until the pieces are soaked and lying flat, keep adding resin and random torn pieces layed across the top of each other in a random pattern till you have a layer of materiel that is about an 8th in thick making sure that the top surface is fairly smooth,you need to be as big a patch as you can fit, that way the metal underneath will rust away for quite a while till it gets to patch size,. after it,s dried squirt it with rubberized undercoating, then put the carpet back down,.
Wagons very often leak from the top down,. and water migrates, i had to pull the headliner on a couple of wagons so far,. and 1 was a real beetch as it was not only leaking from the crappy 16yr old well nuts for the roof rack but also around the one large side window, and migrating from one end to the other,.water will run down door pillars,. across roof support pieces, and ends up a ways from where it,s actually entering, making it sometimes a reall pita to find original point of entry,.the top body seams can leak too the famous wagon 95 had that problem with one seam compromised.
A fibreglass patch will stand up to getting soaked all the time better than any metal patch and some goop,.and as was mentioned if you can't trace the point of entry for the leak, drill a couple of small exit holes,.
If the rust belt guys want another simple trick for longevity, fix the holes,. then do the whole floor in spray in boxliner material, mask off anything you don't want covered like seat studs wiring etc,. stuff is waterproof and damn tough tough,.it,s something i will do after i redo the floor on the one car of mine,.and the next wagon that has the head liner out will get the roof done with this stuff,.if not every part of the interior and inside the doors,.

If your wheel wells arefilling with water,. use the popsicle trick and clean out the drains,.lay on your back outside and look up closely at the seam for the two slots,.(drains)

Nick

I want to fix this correctly. The floor pan was gone on this side of the car beause of it. I had a friend weld in a new stainless patch for me. I plan to pull the C pillar trim off and find this leak this weekend. I did kind of think that water could be leaking up in the roof somewhere like Nick mentioned, I guess I will find out. I like that idea about the bed liner, may have to try that. I'll keep you updated with I find.

welded in a stainless patch?? interesting,.

further info,. welding a floor patch, the metal underneath the car needs to be treated and the weld covered,.
with todays body panel adhesive epoxys, floor patching can be done by anyone determined to use metal patch material
in fact any and all repairs requiring a patch/repair panel, can be done with adhesives, it is an acceptable practise for many OEM's

Nick

I originally was going to use fiberglass for the floor, but a bunch of places online said don't do it. Ever done a full floor pan with just fiberglass?
I'm not sure how well it will do in the long run, but after the panel was welded in I RTV'd all the gaps and am going to spray the bottom with 3M undercoating.

I'm currently battling the same issue. It's filling the passenger footwell. Is there a specific area that the water enters, or is it different on each car? I looked under and around the C pillar but I didn't see anything.

95BRMW wrote:

I originally was going to use fiberglass for the floor, but a bunch of places online said don't do it. Ever done a full floor pan with just fiberglass?
I'm not sure how well it will do in the long run, but after the panel was welded in I RTV'd all the gaps and am going to spray the bottom with 3M undercoating.

I missed this comment,. but think of corvettes,. boats etc,.,.all fibreglass,.
I would have no qualms about building a complete fibreglass floor pan as long as i had either metal or wood encapsulated stringers for the seat braces,.

Nick

I realize the thread is a few months old now, but:

This week I suddenly had the same problem after driving home in the rain yesterday. I know it was completely dry a week or so ago, but this morning the DS middle seat footwell had a puddle of water 1/2" deep -- way too much to have leaked around a roofrack welnut. Poking around inside the wheelwell I found a crack in the layer of hardened undercoating. I took a pneumatic descaler (kind of like an air chisel, but with a bundle of steel needles -- for removing scale from HRS stock) to the undercoating and this is what I found underneath:



With the plastic removed, the inside wasn't very pretty either:



I really didn't need this today.

Oh well, ground it down, cut some sheet metal to fit on the inside, welded in place. Then a layer of short-strand kitty hair to smooth things out, a layer of long-strand for strength, another of short-strand to pretty it up and a good coating of asphalt spray to seal it all. (I was busy trying to get some other things done between each layer and forgot to take more pictures. Sorry.)

No rust on the floorpan yet, so I've got the carpet lifted on blocks of wood with a hair dryer running on low and a dehumidifier running overnight to try and dry things out.

Update: Geez, that carpet underpad really holds a lot of moisture! The hair dryer/dehumidifier combo pulled 4-1/2 litres of water out! That was after repeatedly attacking the carpet with a shop-vac and the underpad with a sponge, so things were "damp dry".

Mine is like that on the passenger side. I used some Tiger Hair to fill it.

Al H. wrote:

Fix it?
Just drill a few drain holes in the floor pan and the problem will be solved.
I've had cars in the past with holes so big in the floor pans that if you drove in deep snow the interior would start filling up with the white stuff.
Nothing that a few liberated road signs, crushed McDonalds bags , fiberglass window screening and plenty of bondo won't fix.

That sounds like something out of "Car Talk"